The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
If you are doing a full format...yes it could introduce some additional wear and tear. I don't know about damage though...maybe over a long enough time.
Be careful what you install on your system--you will see a significant difference between a fresh install and an install that is several months old. Programs often don't fully uninstall, sometimes small programs/spyware sneak in and slow down the system. Be very selective about what you put on your computer and you should stay faster longer. Defragmenting your hard drive as well as using other optimization utilities can speed things up.
I have never heard of a hard drive being damaged by reformatting too much, but as stated, it will cause a lot of extra use/wear & tear. That will eventually take it's toll on the disk. I would not be overly concerned.
Excessive formatting is bad for any hard drive. I've formatted mine only once for a year and a half, although it's really necessary to do a second one.
Only doing a lot of low level formats can damage a HD, the windows type formarting is just like normal data exchange. For those that worry about the same spot of the HD getting hit all the time, well a strong defrag hits the FAT more times than a format!
Formatting all the time, is just wasting your time more than anything else. Just do a defrag once a month and you'll be fine. Only do a reformat when windows is starting to mess up to much. As in the reg isn't holding the values.
As in, I still have a fully working 20MB harddrive from the earily 80s, and it's been formatted more times than a mouse eats cheese!
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